2010 MVP Open Day Japan was held last week!

MVP Lead Chiaki Matsuno has written guest post about Japan Open Days below. For the Japanese translation, please scroll to the bottom of this post.

The annual
Microsoft Japan MVPs–only event, “2010 MVP Open Day Japan,” was held in Tokyo
on Nov. 20 – 21, 2010. MVP Open Day is a
valuable event in which MVPs are given opportunities to learn the latest
Microsoft technologies and to exchange their ideas and knowledge with Microsoft
engineers directly.

About
120 Japan MVPs out of 195 came from all over the country and took part in this
year’s Open Day. This event not only consisted
of the sessions held by Microsoft engineers and MVPs; the attendee party was
also held for networking opportunities among MVPs and between MVPs and
Microsoft engineers. Let’s take a look at
what some sessions and the attendee party looked like.

< Day 1 >

Keynote & General Sessions

One keynote and four general sessions were conducted
on the first day of the event, starting with an opening speech given by Mayumi
Suzuki, Japan regional manager of Community & Online Support at Microsoft. Soon after Mayumi's speach, Toby Richards, general manager of Community & Online Support, took the rostrum this year again and talked about recent changes of communities and social media and new
influencer program named MCC (Microsoft Community Contributor). He also set Q&A period in the half of his
session and listened deeply to the voices of the MVPs.

Moreover, the keynote was delivered by Shunichi
Kajisa, a CTO of Microsoft Development Ltd. NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
sessions regarding “KINECT,” which released on the same day as this event, and “Windows
Phone 7,” which had not been released in Japan yet, were held for the rest of general
sessions. When the demo of KINECT was
provided, the fervor of the audiences was heated up with a burst of applause!

Deepen Exchange at the Attendee Party

The
Attendee Party was held in the banquet hall of the hotel after all the Day-1 sessions
were ended for the purpose of networking among MVPs and between MVPs and
Microsoft engineers. The party was
warmed up through fun games and various confabulations, and MVPs seemed to be
able to deepen exchanges with their peers in a relaxed atmosphere.

< Day 2 >

Covering
the Latest Technologies in depth through 4 Parallel Sessions

On
the second day, a total of 15 breakout sessions were held in four different
rooms. More than half of the breakout
sessions were under NDA, and one of those sessions was held by two MVPs, Shunpei Shiraishi and Futomi
Hatano, both MVPs for Internet Explorer, was about the IE 9 Beta. They discussed its evaluations from the point
of MVPs’ view and had a heated debate through roundtable. The document Mr. Shiraishi used for this session is available here (Japanese only).

While sessions covering hot topics such as IME and
BPOS took place, an interesting session called “Lightening Talk” was held by eight
MVPs; Hirotsune Ikuta (MVP for Word), Ryosuke Uemoto (MVP for VSTO), Satoru
Kitabata (MVP for SharePoint Services), Toru Tanaka (MVP for Excel), Kazuo
Tenra (MVP for Excel), Seki Tanada (MVP for Visio), Yoshio Matsumoto (MVP for
InfoPath), and Gen Muto (MVP for Excel).
Lightening Talk is a speech contest in which each speaker gives free
presentation based on his/her expertise for exactly 5 minutes. If the speakers finish talking within 5
minutes, they have to somehow fill the time available. On the other hand, if the speakers overrun
the allotted time, their speeches will be “force-quit” even though their speech
has not finished yet. After all the
speeches were done, Mr. Muto, who introduced his game software created by
Excel, was selected as a winner by the audiences through a ballot. The biggest reason he won was because he attracted
the audiences by showing amazing technologies of Excel with a witty
speech. You can download the latest game
software created by Mr. Muto here.
(The game is in Japanese only, but you can enjoy it visually for sure! It’s unbelievable,
but this is made of Excel!)

After all the breakout sessions ended, 2010 MVP Open
Day Japan was closed with concluding remarks made by Mayumi Suzuki. According to the survey conducted during the
event, most MVPs seem to be satisfied with the Open Day this year again.